Sunday, April 20, 2008

Frontier Theatre: A History of Nineteenth-Century Theatrical Entertainment in the Canadian Far West and Alaska

Frontier Theatre: A History of Nineteenth-Century Theatrical Entertainment in the Canadian Far West and Alaska by Chad Evans has a wealth of information about entertainers, Canadians and others, who travelled and worked in Canada's west and in Alaska. I particularly recommend this if you are interested in the theatre or, if you are interested in cultural life in Canada's west or in Alaska.

Right now I'm reading the very lively chapter on 'Theatrical Enterprise in the Kootenays', mostly about travelling entertainers and troupes in the 1890's.

Not all were appreciated - In Revelstoke in 1892, McMahon's Circus was memorialized thus

"...beyond being the first that ever exhibited in West Kootenay it had few features worth recording....the show was miserable deficient in good clowns and lady riders."

This particular circus apparently came first to the Canadian Northwest from Australia in 1889, then spent time on the western coast of the U.S. The 1892 trip referred to by the newspaper, was the first time a circus had gone east from Vancouver on the Canadian Pacific Railway.